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26
HASTA LUEGO

When Yasheeda had been around, I had never had trouble getting to sleep. But after the argument we'd had, I was convinced that she was never coming back. I was looking at another four or five years in prison on my own. My insomnia returned and, with it, the little red button reappeared in the middle of my table. I increased the number of sleeping pills I was taking.

During the day I was overcome by drowsiness. I wanted to die. I went back on the higher-dosage pills and one evening, when Ricardo didn't come around to watch the news, I decided it was time to stop thinking about it. Before I went to bed, I swallowed an entire box of pills. I didn't feel anything for a long time. I watched television and I don't remember falling asleep.

In the morning I woke up with blurry thoughts and the feeling of having been cheated. My neighbour was pounding on my door, because I hadn't appeared for lista.
'Hurry up!' he called. 'The major will send you to La Muralla.'
I fell out of bed and went downstairs in my pyjamas, holding on to the railing.
'Presente,' I answered when the major called my name. No one noticed anything different about me except for my neighbour, who saw that I wasn't walking straight. He laughed and asked me if I was drunk.
'I've got a cold,' I told him.

Three weeks after Yasheeda had left, a taxista called up to me that I had a visitor waiting at the gate.